Medical Metaphor as an Instrument of Increasing Performance of International Students from the Preparatory Department

The aim of the article is to decrease the academic difficulties of international students studying “Biology” in Russian within the pre-university program. The authors discussed the educational expediency of using metaphors in the teaching process for international students wishing to take a medical program in the future. The occurrence of new medical metaphors and their usefulness in the frame of a Biology course are demonstrated. Examples of problems designed with medical metaphors are shown. The authors reveal the essence of medical metaphors and classification principles of metaphorical terms. Lexical analysis of medical-biological literature was conducted to identify metaphors and their distribution in the methodical materials for students. The metaphorization helped to identify interdisciplinary bonds between the natural-scientific and humanitarian courses. The authors proposed to include the supplementary material “Medical metaphors” for teaching Russian language and to expand the set of educational materials for international students of medical-biological profile within the pre-university program.